Something interesting FF7 did that doesn't get brought up often.

We all know about Aerith's death. This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling, but this has been brought up millions of times and I do not intend to discuss it here. However, An almost equally bold move FF7 story made has been almost entirely overlooked. I'm talking about the very beginning of the game when Cloud and the gang intentionally crush an entire section of Midgar killing thousands of people including women and children. Cloud did it for 1500 gil too. These characters are morally reprehensible. They are true terrorists and the game made you take part in it. This separates it from say Cecil from FF4 who is not playable until he has seen the light (not to mention the medieval fantasy setting). These are the characters you start out with. Much later on Cloud laments this specific act of terrorism. What do you guys think of this? Did you find it hard to relate to the characters after this? Would this have flew in a post 9/11 world?

It probably fitted right in considering the anti-hero fetish the 90s had.

I don't remember that ever happening. Also Cecil is playable throughout the whole game. Hours before he becomes a paladin.

Well, AVALANCHE is a terrorist organisation, eco-terrorists but whatever... Which bit are you referring to specifically? When they blow up the Sector-7 reactor? I thought that was supposed to be a large theme of that sequence, whether it's worth killing people's lives in order to save the planet?

Wait a thousand people including women and children?! So crushing 1000 men would have been more forgivable?

It sounds like you are confusing blowing up the reactor with causing the plate to fall. AVALANCHE blew up a reactor, which killed Shinra employees most likely. That didn't cause an entire sector to be murdered. What Reno did was cause a support pillar to collapse, that is what killed all the innocent men, women, and children.

I came for something interesting and left unsatisfied.

@PixelPrinny said:

Wait a thousand people including women and children?! So crushing 1000 men would have been more forgivable?

Women and children are always innocent. Except when they're not.

FF7 did a heck of a lot of crazy stuff that everyone forgets about, not to mention things that the "sequels" completely ignore too. I always laugh when they make Cloud into this mopey Emo character nowadays when he absolutely was not. He was hard as nails with a slightly dorky side now and then.

And then there's the Honey Bee Inn.

The whole terrorism thing seemed perfectly fine when I first played it as a young teen, "because it was for a good cause!". It's amazing how absolutely terrifying that line of thought is when you actually process it nowadays though. I mean, all the terrorists we fear in this world have pretty much the same justifications. It's a complicated moral issue and neither side is right; in real or in videogame world.

I'm playing Parasite Eve for the first time right now, Squaresoft had a very brief "edgy" period that I kinda miss.

Meh. People have done that better.

@Draxyle said:

FF7 did a heck of a lot of crazy stuff that everyone forgets about, not to mention things that the "sequels" completely ignore too. I always laugh when they make Cloud into this mopey Emo character nowadays when he absolutely was not. He was hard as nails with a slightly dorky side now and then.

But isn't that because he kind of took Zack's personnality or something? Like he always thought he was Zack until he remembered he wasn't actually in SOLDIER.

@IBurningStar said:

It sounds like you are confusing blowing up the reactor with causing the plate to fall. AVALANCHE blew up a reactor, which killed Shinra employees most likely. That didn't cause an entire sector to be murdered. What Reno did was cause a support pillar to collapse, that is what killed all the innocent men, women, and children.

This is what I was going to post. AVALANCHE was a terrorist organization, but they never crushed a section of Midgar.

Credentials: I just watched my roommate play through the entire Midgar sequence of FFVII over the last month and a half.

I can't remember it too well, but wasn't the plate falling Shinra's response to the bombing of the reactor by Avalanche, in some form or another? I distinctly recall the mission being that they'd bomb the mako reactor, and that event at the end being some sort of by product...

@IBurningStar said:

It sounds like you are confusing blowing up the reactor with causing the plate to fall. AVALANCHE blew up a reactor, which killed Shinra employees most likely. That didn't cause an entire sector to be murdered. What Reno did was cause a support pillar to collapse, that is what killed all the innocent men, women, and children.

This is what I was going to post. AVALANCHE was a terrorist organization, but they never crushed a section of Midgar.

Credentials: I just watched my roommate play through the entire Midgar sequence of FFVII over the last month and a half.

@Max_Cherry: I believe it was actually Shinra that caused the plate to fall.

Yeah Shinra caused the plate to fall but Shinra placed the blame on Avalanche. Innocent people still died from the reactors being blown up though so they still had moral conflicts.

@Strife777: When he had Zack's personality he was more of an emotionless badass, it was only after he realized that he was never in SOLDIER that he became dorky and more of an actual character.

I thought this was going to be about the honey bee inn...

@WalkerD: Oh okay. Sorry I haven't played that game in years and I was pretty young then, so my memory is a little fuzzy.

@LordAndrew said:

@PixelPrinny said:

Wait a thousand people including women and children?! So crushing 1000 men would have been more forgivable?

Women and children are always innocent. Except when they're not.

You know because Men are the expendable gender.

@Strife777 said:

@Draxyle said:

FF7 did a heck of a lot of crazy stuff that everyone forgets about, not to mention things that the "sequels" completely ignore too. I always laugh when they make Cloud into this mopey Emo character nowadays when he absolutely was not. He was hard as nails with a slightly dorky side now and then.

But isn't that because he kind of took Zack's personnality or something? Like he always thought he was Zack until he remembered he wasn't actually in SOLDIER.

That does sort of complicate it. I don't know though, Zack wasn't exactly a super tough, grizzled individual himself from what we saw of him, though there was that little dorky part that got through to Cloud (Zach being extra excited to go on that mission to the reactor, for example).

If anything, Cloud becomes more like Zach after he discovers his true self ("Lets Mosey").

Now I'm confused. He definitely was never emo though.

It's been a long while since ive played it, but i could swear it was one of the Turks that blew up the pillar to crush sector 7 and not any of the main characters, although it was kind of they're fualt but when i was playing through it i have bad feeling towards them since it wasn't them that actually did it but it was still a sucky thing that happened.

@Max_Cherry said:

This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling,

not really, good god FFVII has to be the most overrated game in history.

@PixelPrinny said:

Wait a thousand people including women and children?! So crushing 1000 men would have been more forgivable?

Yes.

@Sooty said:

@Max_Cherry said:

This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling,

not really, good god FFVII has to be the most overrated game in history.

When you consider when the game came out, it kind of makes sense. At the time it was the most cinematic game I've ever played. The story's pretty darn good too, even though it is convoluted. The battle system can be annoying when playing it today, but back then the graphics were impressive enough to make me sit through the whole Knights of the Round animation, over and over again. So yeah, looking at it today, it's not that good. But in 1996, it was some baller shit.

@Draxyle said:

@Strife777 said:

@Draxyle said:

FF7 did a heck of a lot of crazy stuff that everyone forgets about, not to mention things that the "sequels" completely ignore too. I always laugh when they make Cloud into this mopey Emo character nowadays when he absolutely was not. He was hard as nails with a slightly dorky side now and then.

But isn't that because he kind of took Zack's personnality or something? Like he always thought he was Zack until he remembered he wasn't actually in SOLDIER.

That does sort of complicate it. I don't know though, Zack wasn't exactly a super tough, grizzled individual himself from what we saw of him, though there was that little dorky part that got through to Cloud (Zach being extra excited to go on that mission to the reactor, for example).

If anything, Cloud becomes more like Zach after he discovers his true self ("Lets Mosey").

Now I'm confused. He definitely was never emo though.

Except Cloud was in the Soldier program, he was just the absolute bottom rung scraping the barrel lowest rank you could possibly be and ultimately had to join the regular military. This is why he actually went on missions with Zack and Sephy as one of their grunts, they actually knew who he was from his failed attempt to join.

But no, he was not an emo. Yes he emulated Zack cause he looked up to him, but by the end of the game he had remembered his own past and was his own dude again. The whole emo thing is beyond retarded and it would be nice if Japan stopped using it entirely. To quote a buddy on why he didn't like the first Michael Keaton Batman movie "Look at him, he is sitting in his cave bemoaning his parents death all concerned about his love life with Vicki Vale like he is some kind of Emo. Emo's don't have the force of will to be motivated enough to put on a bat costume and beat the shit out of criminals! Batman is not an emo!"

@Max_Cherry said:

Would this have flew in a post 9/11 world?

That is not at all tasteful :/

@Max_Cherry said:

We all know about Aerith's death. This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling

No, it wasn't. Major characters died in video games quite a bit before Final Fantasy VII. Hell, pretty much the same death scene happened in an obscure JRPG three years earlier. (Oh, I am the master of shit like this.)

Like others have already said, AVALANCHE wasn't responsible for that (directly, at least). In fact, I'm pretty sure that event just put more fuel on the fire with their fight against Shinra.

I thought the scene where you meet Dyne in prison and he shoots everyone in the Gold Saucer and kills himself was pretty massive, but everyone seems to have forgot that.

COS YO REMEMBER WHEN AERIS DIED! THEY PLAYED SAD MUSIC!!

@Video_Game_King:

And other times before as well. Why on earth do people still push bullshit like that?

@TwoLines said:

@Sooty said:

@Max_Cherry said:

This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling,

not really, good god FFVII has to be the most overrated game in history.

When you consider when the game came out, it kind of makes sense. At the time it was the most cinematic game I've ever played. The story's pretty darn good too, even though it is convoluted. The battle system can be annoying when playing it today, but back then the graphics were impressive enough to make me sit through the whole Knights of the Round animation, over and over again. So yeah, looking at it today, it's not that good. But in 1996, it was some baller shit.

No, just no. If the non-stop whoring out of 3D has taught us anything, it's that presentation doesn't improve content. FFVII was boldly mediocre even in its time. And the plot? Oh please, it wasn't "darn good." It was crushed by its own weight, much like Chrono Cross that would come years later.

A convoluted plot just for the sake of it doesn't make the narrative anymore intriguing. Between the overdone amnesia angle-turned incoherent plot and the step backwards in gameplay, I was bored out of my fucking mind.

I will never understand what people see in this game.

@I_smell I agree with you bro, Dyne's death was definitely an overlooked moment in FF7.

And yes, I think unless the OP is expressing this oddly, the premise is flawed. AVALANCHE did not destroy the support pillar, that was the Turks' doing (or Shinra through the Turks).

As mentioned, AVALANCHE did blow up Shinra reactors, which may have killed largely Shinra employees as a result (which again isn't awesome either, but there's a difference to be had here).

@Video_Game_King said:

@Max_Cherry said:

We all know about Aerith's death. This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling

No, it wasn't. Major characters died in video games quite a bit before Final Fantasy VII. Hell, pretty much the same death scene happened in an obscure JRPG three years earlier. (Oh, I am the master of shit like this.)

And Tellah in FFIV. And Galuf in FFV. Both killed by the main villain of the game. Aery's death, in context, was only significant because it was in 3D, but not because it hadn't been done before. Major party members have been dying for ages.

@Max_Cherry: Cloud and AVALANCHE did kill innocent bystanders, but they didn't drop the plate that crushed sector 7, Shinra did that. Here's the chain of events:

AVALANCHE launches a series of bomb attacks against Shinra, in an attempt to stop their environmentally-damaging energy business. Cloud participates in such an attack on a Shinra reactor in the opening sequence of the game. Shinra tries, but fails to prevent this attack. Some number of innocent people, including at least some Shinra employees, are caught up in these bombings and killed.

Shinra retaliates against AVALANCHE by opting to destroy the entire sector in which AVALANCHE is based. AVALANCHE tries, but fails to prevent this. Countless innocents, including some members of AVALANCHE are unable to flee in time and are killed.

In the war between Shinra and AVALANCHE, each side is guilty of killing non-combatants caught in the middle and writing off those deaths as acceptable collateral damage justified by the importance of the war.

Here's a relevant conversation from later in the game in which some of the main characters reflect on their actions:

Cait Sith: "When ya blew the Midgar No. 1 up, how many folks d'ya think died?"

Barret: "...that was for the life of the planet. Ya gotta expect a few casualties."

(Cait Sith turns away.)

Cait Sith: "A few? Whaddya mean 'a few'? What may be a few to y'all is everything to them who died......"

(A pause. He turns back to face Barret, who is still staring out the window.)

Cait Sith: "Protect the planet. Hah! Y'all sure sound good! Ain't no one that'd go against ya. So ya think ya can do whatever y'all want?"

(Barret spins to face him.)

Barret: "I don't wanna hear that from no one in Shinra..."

(He turns back to the window. Cait Sith slumps down.)

Cait Sith: "......nuthin' I can do 'bout that..."

(Cloud turns to face them both.)

Cloud: "Stop it!"

Tifa: "Cait Sith...... Barret, he knows what he did. What we did in Midgar can't be forgotten no matter what the reason."

@Nottle said:

@LordAndrew said:

@PixelPrinny said:

Wait a thousand people including women and children?! So crushing 1000 men would have been more forgivable?

Women and children are always innocent. Except when they're not.

You know because Men are the expendable gender.

Augh, now my day is going to be lost browsing tvtropes again. Damn youuuu!

@QuistisTrepe:

To be fair about that one, it was insanely avoidable :P.

@Video_Game_King said:

@QuistisTrepe:

To be fair about that one, it was insanely avoidable :P.

ROTFLMAO. I never knew about that.

@QuistisTrepe:

Because it's something no gamer would ever do if they didn't know about it. Another fun fact in that vein: in Pokemon Red/Blue, you can't get the Pokedex if you evolve your starter first.

@QuistisTrepe said:

@Video_Game_King:

And other times before as well. Why on earth do people still push bullshit like that?

@TwoLines said:

@Sooty said:

@Max_Cherry said:

This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling,

not really, good god FFVII has to be the most overrated game in history.

When you consider when the game came out, it kind of makes sense. At the time it was the most cinematic game I've ever played. The story's pretty darn good too, even though it is convoluted. The battle system can be annoying when playing it today, but back then the graphics were impressive enough to make me sit through the whole Knights of the Round animation, over and over again. So yeah, looking at it today, it's not that good. But in 1996, it was some baller shit.

No, just no. If the non-stop whoring out of 3D has taught us anything, it's that presentation doesn't improve content. FFVII was boldly mediocre even in its time. And the plot? Oh please, it wasn't "darn good." It was crushed by its own weight, much like Chrono Cross that would come years later.

A convoluted plot just for the sake of it doesn't make the narrative anymore intriguing. Between the overdone amnesia angle-turned incoherent plot and the step backwards in gameplay, I was bored out of my fucking mind.

I will never understand what people see in this game.

I played it for the first time about two months ago, I can see why this game is so damn famous. Sure it may not be the first major character death, but it was the most famous. What you are saying sounds more like hate hype train then anything to actually do with the game.

Sure the Zack stuff was overcomplicated, but otherwise the plot stood on firm ground and stuck to it's guns and had a really great tale to tell.

The gameplay is still good enough even for todays standards. Just the graphics have aged horribly.

Amnesia can also be done well in a video game or any story, you just gotta know how to fucking do it. FF7 knew that.

I never believed that this was the greatest game of all time either, I thought that it was going to be average when I played it, however I found it to be a great JRPG that is only hated upon by graphic whores. That is what I see with the game.

@QuistisTrepe said:

@Video_Game_King:

And other times before as well. Why on earth do people still push bullshit like that?

@TwoLines said:

@Sooty said:

@Max_Cherry said:

This was a unprecedented bold move in videogame story telling,

not really, good god FFVII has to be the most overrated game in history.

When you consider when the game came out, it kind of makes sense. At the time it was the most cinematic game I've ever played. The story's pretty darn good too, even though it is convoluted. The battle system can be annoying when playing it today, but back then the graphics were impressive enough to make me sit through the whole Knights of the Round animation, over and over again. So yeah, looking at it today, it's not that good. But in 1996, it was some baller shit.

No, just no. If the non-stop whoring out of 3D has taught us anything, it's that presentation doesn't improve content. FFVII was boldly mediocre even in its time. And the plot? Oh please, it wasn't "darn good." It was crushed by its own weight, much like Chrono Cross that would come years later.

A convoluted plot just for the sake of it doesn't make the narrative anymore intriguing. Between the overdone amnesia angle-turned incoherent plot and the step backwards in gameplay, I was bored out of my fucking mind.

I will never understand what people see in this game.

You seem very angry. Besides the plot (be it good or bad), there's the great graphics and the way the game presented its story. Great camera angles, interesting design of the world, and spectacular music. Games back then didn't do what Final Fantasy VII did. At least none of the games I've played. You don't have to like the story to see the appeal.

@TwoLines said:

there's the great graphics

*nkh*

@Jay444111: Graphics whores and people who hate the hype.

I played it in 1999 on the pc version well after the initial release, loved the game (but it's not in my top ten or anything)

@Video_Game_King said:

@TwoLines said:

there's the great graphics

*nkh*

Well... you know. Now they look absolutely horrible. But it was one of my first PS1 games, and the scope of the game was so impressive... sigh, now they look like anvil-handed monstrosities.

@TwoLines:

Except even back in the day, people were saying it didn't look good.

@Jay444111: I played the game when it first released and thought it was mediocre. I played through it again a few years later during a stretch where I had nothing else to do, thinking I'd give it another chance, and found it even less enjoyable than the first time. It had nothing to do with the graphics or gameplay, and everything to do with the characters, writing, and story. Someone can dislike something that's popular for reasons other than being a "graphics whore" or being on the "hate hype train" as you put it. I just genuinely didn't enjoy it. Opinions!

I'd love to go back to the day this was released and watch the haters honestly say 'Wow, this is garbage.' I can guarantee you everybody was wetting their pants with excitement. In the past few years it's suddenly become cool to hate on it.

Final Fantasy 7 did a lot for video games. I'm not sure why people on a SPECIALIST VIDEO GAME WEBSITE are always trying to pull it down.

@Video_Game_King said:

@TwoLines:

Except even back in the day, people were saying it didn't look good.

Eh, I thought it looked okay. It was servicable. Although my sister kept asking me why they have anvils for hands. I didn't know what to say.

@el_tajij: It did a lot for video games, so everyone has to agree that it's awesome? What it did was bring mainstream attention to the JRPG genre. It does not need to be blindly praised -- as a game -- for something that is irrelevant to its quality -- as a game. The fact that this is a specialist video game website does not mean that everyone who visits these forums is required to share the same opinion.

Also, I'm not sure where you're getting "in the past few years"; there have been opponents to the "FFVII is the bestest!" sentiment since its release.

@Nottle said:

@LordAndrew said:

@PixelPrinny said:

Wait a thousand people including women and children?! So crushing 1000 men would have been more forgivable?

Women and children are always innocent. Except when they're not.

You know because Men are the expendable gender.

You just sent me down an hour long tv tropes hole. >__<

@EchoEcho said:

@el_tajij: It did a lot for video games, so everyone has to agree that it's awesome? What it did was bring mainstream attention to the JRPG genre. It does not need to be blindly praised -- as a game -- for something that is irrelevant to its quality -- as a game. The fact that this is a specialist video game website does not mean that everyone who visits these forums is required to share the same opinion.

Also, I'm not sure where you're getting "in the past few years"; there have been opponents to the "FFVII is the bestest!" sentiment since its release.

It's an awesome game. So why wouldn't everyone agree that it's awesome? The only people I've ever seen complain about Final Fantasy 7 are pissed off, miserable forum kids who were probably too young to play it at the time anyway. If someone can find me a proper, professionally written critique or statement on why Final Fantasy 7 is a bad game that was written at the time of release and shouldn't deserve the praise it got, I'd gladly read it.